A Word From Afar: Selective Amnesia
And Historical Revisionism In The US Presidential Campaign

The gap between the Democratic and Republican tickets has
widened going into the final two weeks of the US
presidential campaign. The financial and stock market
crashes have stoked popular resentment against the
architects of economic policy during the last eight years,
and the post convention “bounce” in support for
Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin has been replaced by
increased discomfort with his judgment and temperament and
her aptitude for leadership and socially conservative views.
Meanwhile, the relative success of the Iraq occupation has
been counter-balanced by the deteriorating security
situation in Afghanistan, which was the original front in
the purported “war against terror” and which remains so
today. Given anti-incumbent sentiment amongst the US
electorate, the decisive advantage is to the
Democrats.

The Democratic Party certainly has its share of
blame in contributing to the market and security debacles of
recent times, but the last three weeks have seen a perfect
storm of negative political fallout for the Republicans.
Revelations about Governor Palin’s abuse of power in
pursuing the unjustified dismissal of her ex-brother in law
from the Alaska State Police are just the latest in a series
of body blows to the Republican ticket. If current trends
continue, the November 4 election could be a rout of
historic proportions, including further losses of
congressional seats by the Republicans that could bring the
Democrats close to a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress
(which is what is needed to pass legislation).

In a sign
of desperation, the McCain/Palin campaign has turned away
from earlier promises of “clean” campaigning and
launched, in concert with its media lackeys, increasingly
vicious attacks on Senator Obama’s character, personal
history and past associations. No longer able to compete on
the pressing substantive issues of the economy, public
policy, and American foreign misadventures, the McCain/Palin
strategy is to divert public attention into so-called
“culture wars” and replaying the domestic ideological
divisions of the past. In parallel, they rebut any critique
of their personal or professional behavior as politically
motivated by a biased press and unpatriotic Democratic
partisans. Having replaced the original campaign team with
advisors from the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove school of wedge
politics (in which sensitive issues like race, immigration,
national security, abortion and homosexual rights are played
upon so as to elicit mobilized fear in the more conservative
segments of the electorate), the McCain/Palin ticket is in
full negative attack mode.

The contours of the strategy
are simple: use historical revisionism and selective amnesia
to assault Barrack Obama on a personal level. Reject all
critiques as partisan. Concentrate debate on the opponent
rather than one’s record of service. The assumption is
that the public is too dumb to know better. The specific
attack points involve Obama’s association with Vietnam-era
radicals and contemporary community organizations and
religious leaders along with questions about his citizenship
and heritage.

The main focus of the strategy is Senator
Obama’s past associations, especially his involvement with
William Ayers, a former Weatherman convicted of bombing the
Pentagon and other government buildings in the early 1970s.
Ayers is now a professor in Chicago, a well-respected
education policy expert who is active in progressive
politics in that city (he received the 1997 Chicago citizen
of the year award). He is also a neighbour of Senator Obama
in the liberal enclave of Hyde Park and has participated in
community organizing events, fund-raisers and committees
with him.

Republicans maintain that Ayers is an
unrepentant terrorist and that Senator Obama, although only
8 years old at the time of Mr. Ayers bombing campaign, is
guilty by association with him. The trouble with this claim
is that it assumes that Mr. Ayers’ current activities are
an extension of his past, and that involvement in
contemporary progressive causes like improving inner-city
education are the modern equivalent of pipe bombs. Moreover,
it ignores the fact that the guerrilla activities of the
Weather Underground and Black Panthers in the early 1970s
were reflective of the extraordinary degree of popular
conflict over the Vietnam War at that time. Although their
violent actions were not condoned by the majority of the
population, the behaviour of such militant groups occurred
in a political climate which saw, among other things, Ohio
National Guardsmen shoot to death nearly a score of unarmed
student protestors at Kent State University, Chicago police
attack peaceful demonstrators at the Democratic National
Convention, race riots sweep black ghettos in a number of
major cities (resulting in dozens of deaths at police hands)
and Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy murdered. Marches
and demonstrations against the war attracted hundreds of
thousands. A tidal wave of students and young people joined
a variety of activist groups at the time, many of which
endorsed “direct action” tactics against the
establishment led by Republican Richard Nixon (the president
who authorised the secret bombing of Cambodia, the overthrow
of Salvador Allende in Chile, the wiretapping of political
opponents and the Watergate burglary of the Democratic
National Committee offices). Those were, in effect,
extraordinary times. To ignore the context of the moment in
order to make it seem as if Mr. Ayers' activities then were
akin to those of Islamic extremists now is to stretch the
point too far. To associate Barrack Obama with any of it is
beyond the pale.

The same is true for Senator Obama’s
association with the Reverends Jeremiah Wright and Michael
Pflegler. The former leads the largest black Christian
church in Chicago and the latter is a well-known catholic
activist for social justice. Both are open in their
anti-status quo perspectives and both have long records of
community activism championing the plight of the urban
underclass in the city in which Mr. Obama came of political
age. Although their rhetoric in the pulpit is fiery, both
have worked within the political system to advance their
communitarian goals. They are, in effect, the progressive
equivalent to the likes of Jerry Flawell, Pat Robertson and
other Christian conservatives with political agendas.
Likewise, attempting to link Senator Obama with the
notoriously anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan and the
Nation of Islam because of their mutual interest in Chicago
South Side politics is akin to linking John McCain and Sarah
Palin to abortion clinic bombers because both are
“pro-life.” Farrakhan endorsing Obama as the
“messiah” equates to Robertson proclaiming George W.
Bush the “chosen one.” Endorsements are not
alliances.

Equally specious is the reasoning of those who
see in the support given by Leftist organizations to the
Obama presidency a communist conspiracy to overthrow the US
government. As a self-professed liberal in a traditionally
conservative country, Barrack Obama naturally attracts Left
support, including those of Marxist-Leninists and other
disgruntled segments of US political society. That does not
mean that he shares their philosophy or agrees with them on
specific issues, especially given the fact that he has
played the establishment game in order to achieve higher
national office. In fact, for the militant Left, Obama is
both an Oreo (literally) and a sell-out. If he ever was a
radical (and there is no evidence to suggest that), he has
betrayed everything he used to stand for in the quest for
power.

The same misunderstanding holds true for
foreigners seeing in Obama a kindred spirit: the US status
quo made him what he his today, both in education as well as
in politics. He may be liberal but he knows which side his
political bread is buttered---and it is not in Iran or North
Korea, even if he deigns to sit down and talk to their
leaders without preconditions. It is delusional to think
that he somehow will impose a socialist agenda on the US if
he achieves the presidency, or that he will completely
reverse the foreign policy of his predecessor. His proposed
changes are reformist, not revolutionary.

On a related
front, the Republican attack dogs led by “Katushka”
Palin (Katushka being a Russian massed rocket array with
considerable firepower but limited accuracy) have zeroed in
on Senator Obama’s association with the community
organisation network known as ACORN. ACORN is the umbrella
organisation that unites a diverse array of community groups
around the US. Organised by region, these groups use ACORN
as an amplifier, echo chamber and lobbyist for their
respective demands while engaging in solidarity networking
and training. As a networking combine ACORN is a grassroots,
progressive ensemble dedicated to improving the material and
social conditions of disadvantaged groups countrywide.

As
a liberal politician Senator Obama worked with ACORN
activists during his days as a community organizer and state
senator in Illinois. The charge against him is that ACORN
somehow precipitated the sub-prime loan crisis by pressuring
banks to lend to poor working class mortgage-seekers
struggling to buy their first homes, and that he, along with
black activists like the Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse
Jackson, were part of the pressure groups threatening to
boycott banks that refused to engage in the at-risk lending
scheme. In this scenario Obama is personally responsible for
the financial meltdown.

The trouble with the depiction of
events is that the program that provided for sub-prime loans
to poor, first time home buyers was approved by Congress,
which guaranteed granting such loans under strict criteria
and oversight, and which provided federal insurance to
private lenders. No bank was “forced” into the scheme,
and individual banks ultimately had the right to deny loans
if they felt that the exposure was too great. Truth be told,
it was not poor (mostly black) first time home buyers but
middle class (mostly white) opportunists increasing their
personal debt in order to purchase real estate as investment
property that precipitated the sub-prime crisis. In the rush
to buy real estate, middle class households over-borrowed
and banks and finance agencies lent far beyond their cash
reserves, making the whole scheme a credit-dependent shell
game. When the financial market began to suffer a liquidity
crisis, the mortgage market collapsed, leaving middle class
investors bankrupt or foreclosed. The banks themselves
eventually followed the path to ruin. ACORN had nothing to
do with that.

Put another way: does anyone in their right
(eous) mind believe that the total accumulated debt of the
American working poor who benefited from ACORN-backed
sub-prime mortgage lending policies in destitute areas
brought down the entire US financial system? Is it not
correct to point out that defaulting at-risk working poor
mortgage holders were foreclosed on their properties
immediately and that the sub-prime crisis only became so
when the gullible mass of middle class real estate
speculators got financially overextended? There is a class
and race aspect to this issue that no US presidential
candidate dares to address. They ignore it at their
peril.

The final line of attack is on Senator Obama’s
family heritage. To the widely disseminated (and
discredited) accusations that he is a closet Muslim (as if
that is a crime), there is the charge that he is not a US
citizen. Questions about his Hawaiian birth certificate have
been raised by right-wing activists keen to ascertain if he
is in fact precluded from the presidency because he is not a
natural-born US citizen (as US law specifies). Here again,
the search for dirt misses the mark. Not only is Hawaii a US
state (which some on the right appear not to know, believing
instead that as a US territory its residents are not allowed
to vote—which also is incorrect). Obama is a US citizen by
virtue of the fact that he was born on US soil and his
mother was an American (this is true whether he has a birth
certificate or not). In order to lose his citizenship right
he would have to have officially applied for citizenship in
another country, renouncing his US citizenship in the
process. He has not done so. Whether his birth certificate
went missing is an issue for state authorities in Hawaii to
answer (since birth certificates are not part of the public
record in Hawaii), but it does not change the facts. Senator
Obama is neither Muslim, foreign born or a non-US
citizen.

There is danger in the Republican strategy of
historical revisionism and selective amnesia. In 1968
Richard Nixon campaigned with a running mate who was a
relatively unknown state governor. His role in the campaign
was to serve as Nixon’s attack dog. In that role he blamed
the “liberal” press for misrepresenting Republican views
and accused the mainstream media of being “nattering
nabobs of negativity.” He delivered blistering personal
attacks on his political opponents. He also made a number of
gaffes in interviews, including opinions on race and social
mores that were seen as intolerant at best and racist and
authoritarian at worst. After the election, the former
governor-turned vice president was indicted on corruption
and misuse of authority charges while in State office,
eventually forcing him to resign (he was subsequently
convicted). That person was Spiro Agnew.

If past
association is anything to go by, John McCain has problems.
Not only was he directly associated with Richard Secord and
other individuals covertly involved in the Iran/Contra
scandal (which involved illegal arms-for-cash and drugs
swaps between the Iranian government, White House officials
such as Oliver North and US-backed anti-Sandinista guerillas
operating from Honduras). He also was a financial
beneficiary and public supporter of Charles Keating, the
criminal financier whose failed Lincoln Savings and Loan
Association was bailed out by the US government for over 3
billion dollars in the late 1980s.

McCain was one of the
“Keating Five,” the group of US Senators who were
charged with corruption for improperly interfering in
federal investigations of Mr. Keating’s business
practices. The senators were accused of receiving over 1.3
million dollars in campaign contributions from Mr. Keating
in exchange for keeping federal regulators at bay, only to
have the collapse of Lincoln Savings and Loan lead to the
failure of 747 savings and loan associations, with a total
cost to the US taxpayer of US$124.6 billion in bailout funds
(paid by the Reagan and George H. Bush administrations). A
Congressional committee and the FBI subsequently cleared
McCain of impropriety, but he was rebuked for exercising
“poor judgment” in his dealings with Mr. Keating. That
he now rails against “corruption” on Wall Street and
calls for more regulation of financial markets is
hypocritical to the point of ridiculous.

Other issues of
“character” could well trip up the Republican ticket.
Serial adultery, pill-popping thievery, abuse of political
position to pursue personal vendettas or ideological
agendas, solicitation or acceptance of gifts from entities
with a vested interest in legislation, association with
people convicted of felonies—surely McCain and Palin do
not want to go there.

The point is not whether there are
more skeletons in the McCain/Palin closet than there are in
that of Obama/Biden. It is not whether Governor Palin’s
record as governor will turn out to be akin to Spiro
Agnew’s or that Senator McCain is singularly unequipped to
deal with matters of financial import or trust. The issue is
that a strategy of personal attack is a double-edged sword
for those who initiate it. In her zealous fervor Mrs. Palin
may not be able to grasp that fact (since her historical
amnesia appears to be real) but Senator McCain surely
understands what it is like to live in a political glass
house.

It is therefore discouraging to see that McCain
has allowed himself to be manipulated into such a corner by
his advisors. Trading in selective facts and distorted
representations in order to impugn his opponent’s
character is unethical. Remaining silent in the face of his
supporter’s thinly veiled racist, xenophobic and
slanderous attacks on Mr. Obama is cowardly. Tacitly
endorsing such views and tactics undermines his claim to be
an honest, “straight talking” agent of change. That
alone disqualifies him from being president, and in the end
it will guarantee that he lose the election. After all, the
American people may be dumbly selective when reflecting upon
their past history, but they are not stupid when it comes to
their immediate future.

Paul
G. Buchanan studies comparative strategic thought. He was
formerly an analyst and consultant to several US security
agencies.

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